Penn State coach Bill O'Brien began his press conference Monday with a 10-minute statement on what happened last week, why he's returning and what happens next.

Here it is.

Obviously a lot has happened over the last week. Many of the
things that happened over the last week were out of my control. But this is in
my control. Today is in my control.

I want to make sure everybody leaves here with a sense of exactly
where I stand and what exactly happened. And how I feel about Penn State.

When the season ended and we had a great victory over Wisconsin,
we immediately went on the road as a staff and began to recruit. Then you go
into a dead period.

I took my wife and [son] Michael to Disney World. Just so you know about
that trip, I’ve been on more roller coasters in the last four or five days than
I’ve been on in my whole life. We had a fun time down there.

While we were down there, the NFL season ended and I believe there
were seven openings at the end of the season. Many of those organizations
contacted my representative, Joe Linta, with interest in talking to me about
being their head football coach. I don’t want to get into which organizations.
That’s not why I’m here today.

Why I’m here today is to tell you a few things. No. 1, I’m a coach
and coaching is my profession. Coaching is something that I love. I love to
coach. I love coaching these kids at Penn State. I enjoy coming into the office
every day and strategizing and thinking about how we can get this team ready
for the 2013 season. I enjoy the week-to-week preparation. I enjoy the
practices and the camaraderie with our staff. We have one of the best staffs in
the country. We have a fantastic staff of guys.

I’m a coach. That’s my profession. Your profession is ... you guys
are journalists. You guys are TV people. You men and women are at the top of
your profession, whether it’s here in Pennsylvania or in the country.

Respect my profession. My profession is coaching. In my
profession, the National Football League is the highest level of coaching. You
don’t get any higher in coaching than the National Football League. Out of
respect for what we did this year, myself and our staff and most importantly
our players and [because of] some of the things I’ve done in the past, a few
teams reached out to my representative.

And we had our conversations. That’s as far as it went. At the end
of the day, the most important thing is the decision that I made. I made the
decision to be here at Penn State, just like I made that decision a year ago. I
can’t think of a better place to be. This is a top 10 football program. This is
one of the best academic institutions in the country, in the world. And I am
very, very proud to be the head football coach here. Very proud.

I have a family. I’m 43 years old. I’ve been doing this for 20
years. I’m basically, in my opinion, about halfway through my career. I won’t
be coaching for 47 more years. I won’t. I will not be coaching when I’m 80
years old. I think I can coach about 20 or 25 more years because that’s where I
see my career going.

I have my wife, Colleen, and my son, Jack, and my son, Michael,
who I love more than anything in the world. And it’s my job as the father and
husband in that house, that I take care of my family first. That’s my job.
That’s my duty as a father and a husband. That’s what I did.

We couldn’t be happier than being at Penn State. We could not be
happier.

In my 20 years of coaching, you can go back and you can ask Mickey
Kwiatkowski, Mark Whipple, George O’Leary, Ralph Friedgen, Ted Roof and Bill
Belichick. You can call them all -- most of them won’t call you back – [but] if you do
get them on the phone, you can ask them, in his years of working for you, did
he ever ask for a raise? They will unequivocally tell you no.

I have never
asked [athletic director] Dr. [David] Joyner or [President] Dr. [Rodney] Erickson for a raise. No one at Penn State has ever
come to me and said to me, “We’re going to make a donation so that you can get
a raise." That’s a bunch of malarkey. It’s not true. It never happened. It never
will happen. That’s the last thing that I’m about. If I was about money, more
than likely I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now.

It’s not about money. It’s about making sure that Penn State –
Penn State University, Penn State athletic department and Penn State football –
does everything we can in our power to make this place the best it can be for
our student-athletes. That’s what it’s about, in my mind.

So what does that mean? People have asked me over the last several
days about structural changes and things like that. No. 1, I believe in a chain
of command. Dr. Erickson is the president of this university, and I have a ton
of respect for him. Dr. Joyner is our athletic director, and I have a ton of
respect for him.

I follow their lead. I look at it this way. Dr. Erickson is like
the CEO. Dr. Joyner is the captain of the athletic department. And those guys
are my bosses, my immediate boss being Dr. Joyner and Dr. Erickson being my
ultimate boss. And I stand in line behind them and I support them.

On a daily basis, I think about what those two men have meant to
this university and what they’ve been through, about what decisions they’ve had
to make. I stand behind them.

My horses in the race here at Penn State are my players and my
coaching staff. And that’s the No. 1 thing as it relates to Penn State. I want
to make sure that we do everything we can, whether it’s in the weight room or
our coaching meeting rooms or maybe we can add a few people in our recruiting
department or maybe we could help our academic staff by adding a few people. Maybe we can help our sports information staff. Whatever it has to do with
football at Penn State, I want to make sure that every year that we do the best
we can to be on the cutting edge of having the best football program we can
possibly have. That’s my job.

My job is to make sure we field the best football team we possibly
can, that we graduate our players, and that we continue to attract the top-notch, character, academic, disciplined kids, student-athletes, who are out
there. That’s my job.

I absolutely enjoy every single day coming to work here. I’ll tell
you my routine. ... I watch tape. I meet with our staff. I talk to
our kids. I do everything I can to make sure I’m making sure that Penn State is
in the most successful position it can be as it relates to the football
program.

That’s something I wanted to make sure that everybody here knew.
Again, going back to money and all these other things. I really find it -- and I
have a lot of respect for everybody here, I really do -- but you really don’t
know me if you write something or say something that this guy did it for
leverage and money. I didn’t do anything. I had a conversation in the best
interests of my family with a few, you know, people.

At the end of the day, this is the decision I made. We’re all
faced with choices. I chose Penn State because I love coaching these players. I
really like our staff and I really like the direction that we’re headed. I have never asked anyone for a raise, and no
one’s ever even brought up the fact that you get a raise.

Hey, look, six months down the road, if I get a raise, would you
like a raise? Everybody would like a raise every once in a while. Yeah, of
course, I’d like a raise. I’m just like everybody else. But I have never asked
anybody for a raise. So, to me, it really borders on … you guys know me, the
guys that have been around me, I have a little bit of an Irish temper. It gets
my blood boiling a little bit when somebody tells somebody else or writes
something that this was about money.

It wasn’t about anything other than making sure that I saw the
opportunities out there and that I do the best job I can for my Penn State
football players and my Penn State football staff. So, with that being said,
I’ll end on this.

I want to make sure everybody knows that there are many, many
alums that I’ve come into contact with overt the last year. [They’re] some of
the best people I’ve ever met. One of the things that was really neat when the
sanctions came out last summer was, we invited our lettermen to come to speak to
our team. We have over 1,000 members of our lettermen organization.

I sent out an invitation on a Wednesday to be here on a Monday. I
only gave them about four or five days advance notice because we had to get
going. The sanctions were coming, and kids had to make decisions.

I think almost 500 lettermen showed up for that. That’s
incredible. Many of those men I met for the first time there. That’s
incredible. There’s not many programs around the country that are like that. I
had met a lot of those guys, like Dr. Joyner and Paul Suhey.

In addition to them, I’ve gotten to know Terry Pegula and Ira
Luber and Peter Tombros. And many, many people here. Not one time, not one time, have
I ever asked them for more money for me. Or have they ever said to me, "Hey,
we’re going to give you more money."

It’s never happened. It never will. Sure, would I like them to
donate money to our football program so that we can get a couple new treadmills
or something new in the training room? Sure. These are some of the most
outstanding people I’ve met. I’m proud to know them. I have a good relationship
with them.

I’m very, very thrilled to be the head football coach at Penn
State. I’m really looking forward to watching the development of this team
going forward. It’s a few months before spring practice. I can’t wait for spring
practice. Over the next month and a half you really won’t be able to get a hold
of me because I’ll be out recruiting. I’m really excited about the direction of
recruiting.

I think people have to understand the situation we’re in right
now. I would tell you that recruiting is going very well. Obviously, I can’t
mention anybody’s name because that’s illegal. I can tell you that, you think
about the situation that we’re in, and you think about the type of guys that
we’re able to recruit and that are receptive to us, it’s really an outstanding
job by our football staff. Our football staff is outstanding. That’s a group of
me I’m proud to be associated with. Hopefully we can take care of them, too,
and make sure we do right by our football staff.

Current Comments

It seems the editor of this blog could learn from his colleagues to use the scroll saver, (read more) tool.
The full print must want to exude a PSU readall pre-requisite!

Posted By: (Read More) column saver | Jan 7, 2013 2:48:05 PM

People, understandably, are cautious to believe in today's world of college athletics that maybe... just maybe there are a few coaches of pure character. Too often a coach says "I am not going anywhere" and then is holding a press conference about their new job just days later. Honesty, hard work, honor commitments,... can still be gems to be treasured, can still be a guiding force in how to conduct oneself daily. So far, it seems that we at Penn State have found a coach that leads by the same kind of guiding force. The NCAA (some would say unfairly) seemed to tear away some of what true PSU fans believed in. With each day I see Bill O'Brien restoring all of that and more. Fill Beaver Stadium and root for those kids on the field. Those athletes did nothing to deserve anything less than our full support.